Raid Software

[R1700]

Hi everyone,

 

I am hoping someone could point me in the right direction.

 

My current build:

Ryzen 1700

Asus B350 Plus

Corsair Vengeance DDR4 16GB 2400MHz

Samsung M.2 960 Evo 250gb (Windows OS)

Sapphire RX480 8GB

Storage 1: WD Red 10TB

Storage 2: WD Red 10TB

Storage 3: WD Red 8TB

Case: Fractal Design Define R6

 

The Primary purpose of my build is for storage and everyday use (office, email, editing, etc.); I save all my files and records to these storages. Recently, someone brought to my attention that a raid setup would be a good idea in the event of one of my drives going down. I have searched high and low for a software solution for a Raid6 setup and came up short.

 

2 questions:

1. What would be the best software solution for this?

2. Will I be able to convert to raid without data loss? If more drives are required, Black Friday is around the corner lol. I also have an SDD laying around if that helps.

 

Thanks for your time and help!

[Electronics Wizardy]

You want backups for this. Raid is mostly for uptime, and backup is for preventing data loss.

 

Id look into a cloud service or externall hdds and setup backups.

 

You can do raid with storage spaces, but backups will work better for your use.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

23 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You want backups for this. Raid is mostly for uptime, and backup is for preventing data loss.

 

Id look into a cloud service or externall hdds and setup backups.

 

You can do raid with storage spaces, but backups will work better for your use.

Exactly! RAID is NOT a backup! While a RAID will protect you from data loss and downtime due to drive failure (the number of drives failing depending on the type of RAID), there are many other causes of data loss, such as viruses and othr malware, user error (such as accidental deletion), file corruption, fire, flood, theft, a surge from the power line or a failed PSU frying your drives, accidentally knocking over the computer (especially if the drives are spinning and the heads aren't parked), etc.

 

For data to be reasonably safe, it must exist in three, separate places. For most people, this is on the computer (a RAID is part of the computer), on an onsite backup drive, and on an offsite backup drive. For a drive to be a true backup drive, it must be kept powered down, disconnected from the computer, and stored away from the computer.

 

A good rule of thumb when budgeting for data drives is, for each new data drive you buy, get three drives of the same size: one for the computer and two for backup the first drive.

[r2724r16]

Don't use RAID, use offline backups. I've been doing that and my data is safer than it would've been with RAID. I believe Louis Rossmann has a YouTube video explaining that RAID is not a backup.

[AbsoluteFool]

1 hour ago, r2724r16 said:

Don't use RAID, use offline backups. I've been doing that and my data is safer than it would've been with RAID. I believe Louis Rossmann has a YouTube video explaining that RAID is not a backup.

Louis Rossmann is not really a software guy. Offline backup have just as much chance as going bad as hot backup, backup servers also use RAID. Which i believe is much of the confusion when people combine RAID and Backup. 

 

Idealy you'll have two or more backups to even call your "backup" safe. And on top of that you want all the "copies" in different locations.

[r2724r16]

1 minute ago, AbsoluteFool said:

Offline backup have just as much chance as going bad as hot backup, backup servers also use RAID.

Not really TBH. I have 10+ year old offline backup HDDs that are working just fine today, and the chance that they'll go bad sitting around doing nothing is pretty slim. Having drives in RAID is more risky since you could accidently delete something.

[R1700]

3 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You want backups for this. Raid is mostly for uptime, and backup is for preventing data loss.

 

Id look into a cloud service or externall hdds and setup backups.

 

You can do raid with storage spaces, but backups will work better for your use.

Thanks, Wizardy!

 

Will windows storage spaces allow for RAID6?  

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, R1700 said:

Thanks, Wizardy!

 

Will windows storage spaces allow for RAID6?  

Yea, it will, but its slow with writes.

 

You want backups here, not raid though.

[R1700]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Yea, it will, but its slow with writes.

 

You want backups here, not raid though.

You're definitely right, backups are the way to go. However, doesn't the double parity provide more than enough protection from data loss? If one of my three drives goes down then I can easily swap in a new one and allow the system to rebuild...

 

Thanks for your super fast reply!

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, R1700 said:

ou're definitely right, backups are the way to go. However, doesn't the double parity provide more than enough protection from data loss? If one of my three drives goes down then I can easily swap in a new one and allow the system to rebuild...

Raid will protect you from a disk failure, but thats often not the biggest risk to your data.

 

Backups can help with problems like power surges, user error, corrupted filesystems, the whole computer being destroyed, randsomware and other problems. Raid will lose all your data in these situations, but good backups can get your data back.

[R1700]

17 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Raid will protect you from a disk failure, but thats often not the biggest risk to your data.

 

Backups can help with problems like power surges, user error, corrupted filesystems, the whole computer being destroyed, randsomware and other problems. Raid will lose all your data in these situations, but good backups can get your data back.

I am not too concerned about those, to be honest. I may need to swap my power supply though sometime soon.

I apologize that I sound so obsessed with RAID at the moment.

 

How would I go about using Windows 10 to convert these drives to a RAID6 without losing data?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, R1700 said:

I am not too concerned about those, to be honest. I may need to swap my power supply though sometime soon.

I apologize that I sound so obsessed with RAID at the moment.

 

How would I go about using Windows 10 to convert these drives to a RAID6 without losing data?

Any raid solution will require a reformat and to lose all data currently on the drive(well you can try snapraid, but its a bit different and file level).

 

Once you have empty drives, just make a volume in storage spaces.

 

Also with mixed drive sizes here, raid won't use the space well. Really you want backups.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

2 hours ago, AbsoluteFool said:

...Offline backup have just as much chance as going bad as hot backup...

That simply is not true! A "hot backup" can be infected with the same viruses and other malware that the drives in the computer get infectd with. That will not happen with an offline backup as long as one runs antivirus and other antimalware scans prior to updating the backups.

 

2 hours ago, AbsoluteFool said:

...backup servers also use RAID...

You are confusing the purpose of redundancy with backups and comparing apples with kumquats. Redundancy (and RAID is not the only form of redundancy) is used in servers to protect against data loss due to drive failure and allow for continuous operation when a drive fails. If a server is running and connected to a computer all the time, it is NOT a backup!

 

Commercial servers have security provisions in place to avoid infection from the source of data they store and from data theft, versioning to protect against data loss due to infections and accidental deletions, backup power and cooling systems to protect against power or cooling loss, armed guards to prevent sabatoge and data theft, and, often, geo redundancy should an individual server go down or be damaged.

 

2 hours ago, AbsoluteFool said:

...Idealy you'll have two or more backups to even call your "backup" safe. And on top of that you want all the "copies" in different locations.

That I can agree with. I have frequently posted that for data to be reasonably safe, it has to exist in three separate places. For most people, that means on the computer, on an onsite backup drive, and on an offsite backup drive. For a drive to be a backup, it must be kept powered down, disconnected from the computer, and stored away from the computer except while updating the backup.

 

1 hour ago, R1700 said:

You're definitely right, backups are the way to go. However, doesn't the double parity provide more than enough protection from data loss? If one of my three drives goes down then I can easily swap in a new one and allow the system to rebuild...

It protects you from data loss due to drive failure (up to a point, depending on the failure tolerance of the RAID or other redundancy) but will not protect you from other ways of losing data I've already mentioned.

 

32 minutes ago, R1700 said:

I am not too concerned about those, to be honest...

You should be. 

[AbsoluteFool]

On 11/15/2018 at 11:06 PM, r2724r16 said:

Not really TBH. I have 10+ year old offline backup HDDs that are working just fine today, and the chance that they'll go bad sitting around doing nothing is pretty slim. Having drives in RAID is more risky since you could accidently delete something.

Well that depends on how you store the offline drives. More than activity can destroy drives. If you do things properly the chance of "accidentaly deleting" something is quite small. In my 15+ years i've never once accidentaly deleted one single thing on any of my systems. 

The chance for a harddrive to go bad because of the archive location is actually quite high. This can be caused of humidity and temperature changes. Not to mention reader heads that doesen't pull back get's "glued" to the platterns, and this are issues i've seen more with external harddrive "backup" than anything else.

 

While offline backup is a true backup. It's not the most secure.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

1 hour ago, AbsoluteFool said:

...If you do things properly the chance of "accidentaly deleting" something is quite small. In my 15+ years i've never once accidentaly deleted one single thing on any of my systems...

Well, unless your system includes backups, you are quite exceptional. Most of us are human still subject to human foibles, including accidental data deletion.

[AbsoluteFool]

45 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Well, unless your system includes backups, you are quite exceptional. Most of us are human still subject to human foibles, including accidental data deletion.

Of course i have backups, in three different locations to be exact. 

I guess i'm just more careful than most people. But with good reason as i do not only handle my own data